Week twelve

Looks like the florets at the top of the inflorescence are not going to make it. Must check the lupin already noticed, perhaps the foxgloves at Polesden Lacey to see if they to the same thing.

Notice the green food waste bins on top of the regular green bins, a custom which has spread along the road over the past couple of weeks, the foxes having learned how to open these bins, advertised as fox-proof. And having opened them, they scatter the contents all over the road, presumably picking out the odd morsel of meat or fat which interests them.

BH does not put out our food waste bin, on the odd occasion when she has something to put in it, until first thing Monday morning, more or less eliminating the risk - but most people prefer to put all their bins out on Sunday evening. The odd occasion being when we have some meat or fish bones - not allowed on the compost heap, where they are apt to attract foxes, rats or both. We understand that there is an ongoing debate on the road social media site (which my Microsoft telephone cannot reach). Perhaps there is talk of sanctioning the fox feeders. Or, more usefully, of hiring a pest controller to kill some foxes.

More serious, talk of pests escaping from the virology research institute at Wuhan has resurfaced. See, for example, reference 2. In ITV3 murder mysteries, the line would be that improbable as it may seen, the institute should be looked at with a view to eliminating it from our enquiries. But given the Chinese taste for secrecy in these matters, this seems unlikely to happen, which is a pity. While I do have some sympathy for them, in that if the plague did turn out to have been caused by a leak from one of their laboratories, the reaction of the rest of the world might be crude and vindictive. With the rest of the world forgetting that quite a few countries have research institutes of this sort, often with links to the military, and an accident could happen in any one of them. Appendix I at reference 3 at reference 3 lists quite a number of such accidents with foot and mouth viruses, mostly, but not all, quite a long time ago. Perhaps we have got better of this sort of thing. On the other hand, what about all the other accidents, excluded from this particular list?

If such a thing were to happen in the UK - which it might well, given the story at reference 3 - I can just see flocks of lawyers, with the media in full attendance, coming in for a juicy and lucrative kill. Or would the government of the day try to bury the matter under our own official secrets acts? Not in the public interest to stir it all up?

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/05/week-eleven.html.

Reference 2: https://2017-2021.state.gov/fact-sheet-activity-at-the-wuhan-institute-of-virology/index.html. From the office of the 'spokesperson' no less! Back in January.

Reference 3: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/04/biosecurity-in-uk.html.

Reference 4: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6543/694.1. Another view.

Group search key: tfe.

BlueJeans

Advertisements for Virgin's Hyperloop started appearing on my PC this morning, courtesy of something called Verizon BlueJeans.

Looking more closely, I find that the event described actually happened last November. So what is it doing on my PC? Looking more closely still, I find that BlueJeans is a virtual meeting offering from Verizon, presumably in competition, in these viral times, with the likes of Zoom and Microsoft Teams. With our having used each of these last two products just once here in Epsom, with neither product achieving anything like full functionality on these first outings. Not yet motivated to do better - let alone look at this Verizon product.

But having poked both Hyperlink and BlueJeans this morning, I look forward to a stream of advertisements for same over the next few days, popped into slots in all those web pages which rent space to Google or Microsoft.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/11/bricks-and-other-matters.html. The Hyperloop's first passengers - and most recent outing here.

Reference 2: https://virginhyperloop.com/project/regulatory-progress. How much of this will leave the drawing board? The source of the snap above. Perhaps something else that Brexiteers can be glad that we have escaped from - although if you hate Europe and love trains you might have divided loyalties.

Missed my chance

I learned the other day that a slide running around a bit of a famous Los Angeles skyscraper, now known as the Bank Tower, will not be reopening, with the new owners (the people at reference 2) being more interested in collecting rent than operating a tourist attraction. They bought the place on the cheap last year, when plenty of people were getting nervous about the long term value of office space in giant tower blocks, cheap enough that they feel able to spend $60m on refurbishment of this thirty year old building. Refurbishment which will include removal of the five year old sky slide.

So I have missed my chance of having the experience of my life. Not that it was ever a very good chance, with it being reasonably unlikely that I will ever visit Los Angeles again and very unlikely that I would have a go on such a thing - at least without a good push and a large dose of Valium or some such.

One hopes the stripes on the right thigh bottom right are a trick of the light rather than something horrid happening - like being old or being on a starvation diet. 

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Bank_Tower_(Los_Angeles).

Reference 2: https://www.silversteinproperties.com/.

A lupin head

The lupin noticed at reference 1 has now come into flower. BH - O-I-C of the plant in question - having kept the whitefly at bay with washing up liquid, presumably in a dilute form. While I, at about this time of year, used to keep the blackfly on the broad beans at bay by pinching out the leads. Which did surprisingly well, provided you did it before the flies spread into the plants proper. I think there has also been talk of slug pellets.

I don't suppose the next head will be as good as this one. Particularly since we are talking pot-lupin.

My mother used to grow lupins on the flower bed at the back of our back lawn, the one that backed onto the trellis, beyond which one had the raspberries and strawberries - these last being the object of many a childhood chore. For example, extricating a black bird from a strawberry net. As I recall, an ungrateful little beggar. And as I recall the lupins, they came up big and strong every year, without pharmaceutical or other attentions. But I was quite young at the time. 

But I do associate to the very impressive display of lupins we once saw at a flower show, probably the one at Hampton Court, which we have probably made more often than the one at Chelsea.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/04/an-outing.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2017/08/bognor-three.html. Somebody else's lupin.

Reference 3: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2017/06/flowers.html. The only other mention of lupins. Not turned up by the search box above, possibly because it was being literal and did not allow 'lupins' on a search term of 'lupin'.

A coup

Barely a week since our last coup, we broke through to the 600 barrier at Scrabble again this afternoon, even it we did not quite get over it. BH was unlucky in her letters, in that while she drew all the big scorers, that is to say the 'Z', the 'Q', the 'X' and the 'J', I made more points from them than she did. Added to which the blocked up layout pushed her into giving me triple words.

We will celebrate with a bottle of 'Mademoiselle', with the last recorded bottle being more than three months ago now, at reference 2. Which doesn't seem right, but as the nurse at FIL's nursing home told us, if you don't write it down, it hasn't happened. You didn't do it. The record rules!

We had thought to take a glass outside, but the sun has just dropped behind the trees at the bottom of the garden and we thought it would cool down pretty quickly now, so settled for indoors. Which has the advantage that I am less likely to forget my warfarin. 

And we will see if it lasts long enough to go brown on us.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/05/scrabbled.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/02/haggis.html.

Beef one

Last Friday saw the start of the next round of beef, a couple of fore ribs, which weighed in at 6lbs 13.5oz. Much the same as last time, which simplifies calculation of cooking time.

But on Saturday, BH realised she had no more horseradish, something she likes on her beef. So in the afternoon, off to Waitrose, where the helpful lady at customer services asked whether I wanted it on the root or creamed in the jar. And then carried me off to the latter, a Waitrose essential at £1. In the event I am told it did very well. Meantime, interested to find that Waitrose actually sold horseradish root, albeit out of stock on this particular occasions, I associated to the days when we tried to make horseradish sauce ourselves, from scratch, at that time having a large enough garden to be able to afford a few square yards for horseradish. We did not do a very good job, but I do remember that you needed to be careful when you opened the jar - we used large coffee jars - careful to keep your nose and eyes out of range, as otherwise you were nearly knocked down by a shot of ammonia.

Back in the market square, with lock down easing, at least two young ladies in party dress, in full war paint.

Not very busy on the new Wetherspoon's terrace at 1730.

In any event, I elected for the Blenheim, aka TB. The tent, which had lost a corner to a gust of wind a few days previously had been repaired. Fair number of people both inside and out. Young people inside, families and strays like myself outside. Very young waitresses - which meant that at least one large food order went a bit wrong. While my wine fell in price by £1 between the first and second shots. No-one, including me, cared enough to sort that out.

I also noticed that the windows were the same sort of timber bedded steel windows as graced our own house before we progressed to double glazing. A bit of a pain from a maintenance point of view, so odd that the owner has not seen fit to replace them. Odd too that I had not noticed them before - having spend enough time there over the years.

All of which reminded me that TB went through a phase as a Watney's house, the people who almost invented keg beer in the south of England with their Red Barrel product. Maybe it started out as one.

My first visit to a public house for just a drink, rather than a drink and a meal since last autumn.

PS: fag ends not mine.

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watney_Combe_%26_Reid. From which I learn that Red Barrel was invented in 1931, although it did not become big until the 1960's. While I think the Mortlake brewery now does Budweiser of all things.

Progress

I have been moaning for years about the way that insurance companies crank up one's premiums every year, perhaps knocking a bit off if you phone up and make a fuss or threaten to terminate. I was particularly annoyed that the Halifax Building Society - once a cuddly mutual which existed to serve its members  - was an egregious offender.

It seems that lots of other people have been moaning about this, some effectively, with the result that the Financial Conduct Authority has now published new rules banning the practise known as price walking. That is to say gradually pushing up the prices charged to long standing customers for home and motor insurance who look unlikely to make a fuss. Perhaps, particularly, older customers who don't understand or can't be bothered with all this price comparison lark.

These new rules are to be found at reference 2. 217 pages of new rules which look as if lots of expensive lawyers have made good money from writing them. New rules which very much need the gloss provided by the FT at reference 1 to make them intelligible to the lay reader.

PS 1: my new-to-me Webster's tells me that egregious comes from the Latin, literally meaning standing out from the herd. In Latin, grex, gregis, noun masculine.

PS 2: the FT also says that the insurance companies made all their profits from these long standing customers. And spent near a third of their premium income on trying to pull in new customers. Which doesn't sound to me like markets working the magic whereby everyone is a winner that our fat leader and his friends (like Paul Dacre of reference 3) attribute to them. Maybe they don't believe it either: it's just a yarn they tell to keep us quiet while they rip us off.

Reference 1: Insurance/regulation: counting the cost of a loyalty rip-off ban: Stamping out the loyalty penalty will force companies to adopt more rational pricing strategies - Opinion Lex/FT - 2021.

Reference 2a: https://www.fca.org.uk/publication/policy/ps21-5.pdf.

Reference 2b: General insurance pricing practices market study: Feedback to CP20/19 and final rules: Policy Statement PS21/5 - Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) - 2021.

Reference 3: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/05/union-jack.html.

Dog whistles

Last week, I noticed dolphins sending each other call signs in the form of whistles, with each whistle being of the order of a second in duration.

This morning I hear of some cats and dogs who, when they are being minded by a neighbour or some such, seem to know when their owner is coming back. More particularly, when their owner's car pulls up outside.

Maybe it would be an interesting six form project to make recordings of car (engines) and to investigate the extent to which individual cars could be identified from those recordings. It seems entirely plausible that make of engine should be identifiable in this way, but what about a particular engine? What about the degradation of the signal as it passed from the outside world into the interior of a house?

But then I thought to ask Bing, and there is already plenty of activity out there. Reference 2 talks of identifying type of boat from the engine noise - with type being nothing more complicated than private, taxi and cargo. Reference 3 does something similar with military aircraft. While Google turns up reference 4 which does cars.

Nothing yet to suggest that one can identify a particular car. But maybe for the purposes of cats and dogs, getting the model and perhaps the age (mileage) of a car right would be enough. The right sort of car would, nearly always, be the right car.

PS: it also seems entirely plausible that some engines will make some peculiar noise, that their sound signatures will include some unusual features, which mean that those individual engines can be identified. Perhaps the result of damage during birth or during life. Such things have featured on ITV3 murder dramas before now. But not necessarily something that you could rely on. Perhaps just a minority of engines have such peculiarities.

Reference 1: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/05/the-call-signs-of-certain-dolphins.html.

Reference 2: Engine Noise Signature for Boat Identification - James Curry, Jonathan Ross - 2007.

Reference 3: Military aircrafts’ classification based on their sound signature - Maria Barbarosou, Ioannis Paraskevas, Amr Ahmed - 2016.

Reference 4: Engine Speed–Independent Acoustic Signature for Vehicles - Hüseyin Göksu - 2016.

Shopping

We made it to Kingston on the second day of the grand reopening. With BH in the driver's seat.

Which meant that I had a fine view of the buttercups in the fields to the left of Hook Road, more or less opposite St. Ebba's. From my angle, sheets of yellow - sheets which might have been rape if one had not known better.

Hit just the one kerb on the way up into the Rose car park, not bad considering it was the first occasion for a while.

Fish present at their usual spot, if not numerous, in the Hogsmill, by the police station.

Coffee failed in the Rose theatre, the pleasant wet & dry refreshment shop there presumably closed for the duration. Coffee failed in the market square, not altogether sure why, so we gravitated to the coffee shop which has been set up in the main church next door. Smack in front of the important memorial to a once important burgher. Hopefully the line had died out and no-one remains to be annoyed by the lack of respect. A variety of lack of respect which I might say is all over Westminster Abbey, with all kinds of memorials, large and small, tucked away in odd corners like so much lumber.

A shop which comes with worthies who come and talk to anyone who looks likely or needy. We drew a gentleman, perhaps of about our age, an Armenian who had moved about the middle east in his time, with grandparents who fled the massacres at the beginning of the 20th century and including spells in Jerusalem and the US. A university teacher by profession. His mother tongue was Aramaic and he had a story about Hebrew being a bit exclusive at the time of our Lord, and so it came about that it was Aramaic which became the lingua franca in that part of the world, although one supposes that it has moved on a bit since then. For which see reference 2. He also showed us his crucifix, hung around his neck, purporting on sale to include a fragment of the true cross. The first time I have seen such a thing since visiting the pilgrimage church at Walsingham. For which see reference 1.

Into the Bentall centre to do our business, to find that there was a mix-up about dates, and the shop in question was in the middle of being moved from one side of the centre to the other. But we were able to make a new appointment and to do some orientating window shopping.

A little early for lunch, so we settled for bread and cheese at home, thinking about the North Star, the Bonesgate (now renamed) and various other places of that sort, but getting past them without stopping. This despite my now being in the drivers's seat (and, as it happens, not hitting any kerbs on my way out of the car park).

Bread and cheese - actually mushrooms rather than cheese in my case and corned beef rather than cheese in BH's case - done, moved onto planting out sunflowers (shift one). Then convincingly beaten at Scrabble, my third loss in three games. The shame of it. Then planting out sunflowers (shift two).

Interesting goings on on the compost heaped up behind the new daffodil bed.

Some kind of fungi on the other side of the path.

The day rounded out with pork chops, rather substantial affairs which we decided to bake rather than to grill - the grill on our otherwise excellent cooker being a bit basic. I couldn't manage the two allocated to me, so a modest portion left for breakfast the following day. Getting on for an hour at 180°C or something like that.

Reference 1: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2012/07/church-visits-in-norfolk.html.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aramaic.

Last day

For our last day in Holne, mild and still with neither wind nor rain, it was a toss-up between a stroll up the Dart at New Bridge to the north east of our cottage or a stroll up to Hembury Castle to the south east, with notice of previous visits to this old castle noticed at references 1 and 2. Furthermore, BH was convinced that we could see the castle from our bedroom window. Notwithstanding, the vote went to New Bridge.

Where it was very wet. There was lots of moss. Lots of some relative of carex pendula, noticed here from time to time. Some frilly fungus on the end of a log. While the ice cream van from whom we have made the occasional purchase in the past was missing, despite the driver telling us, some years ago now, that he was there every day bar Christmas Day. Or at least that is what I remember. A remember more or less corroborated at reference 3.

Quite possibly the feature known as Horseshoe Falls. A miniature version of Niagara Falls.

A new to us nature walk gate latch. Simple and effective; within the compass of almost any blacksmith.

A little effort and I ran down the pond on the other side of the river, beyond the car park. I remember it as being more enclosed, a tank even, than it turned out to be. But there was some late nineteenth century ironwork. This morning I asked Bing what the white flowers were, and failed, but Google turned up Aponogeton_distachyos fast enough. Which I might have found even more quickly had I read reference 3 beyond the bit about ice cream. Yet another flower from South Africa which has made it up here. They must be neck and neck with the Mexicans.

On the way home we passed once again the bookshop mentioned at reference 3, the bookshop in sheds in the garden of an older couple one suspects of having moved to Devon from Surrey or Hampshire. Possibly military. But on this occasion we decided we had enough unread books already.

Later in the day I strode out onto Holne Moor, to catch the cuckoos already noticed at reference 5. Not out long, but long enough to feel the pull of the wide open spaces. The still and the wind.

The water supply for a nearby farm, what I believe is called a leat. But not, I think, how the water got from Venford Reservoir to Paignton, a problem first mentioned at reference 5. On which subject I have yet to have a reply to my message from South West Water. Perhaps the contact page I used was really intended for reporting leaks and operational stuff like that. No place for heritage.

The reservoir.

Heading back to the cottage, plenty of gorse in flower. Also the low trees, said to be favoured by cuckoos when looking for nests on the ground.

Not a long walk, maybe two or three miles altogether, but long enough for me to puff a bit on the uphill, outward leg. Must be different muscles than one uses on a bicycle.

PS 1: in the course of writing this blog, I came across the snap above of the Chelsea football team. It struck me that team working given all the different languages which look to be involved must be a bit of a problem - with footballers probably not being that strong in the foreign language department. Can't devote one's childhood to the sport and do books. Maybe its all very physical and everybody can get by without too much in the way of words. For some reason I associated to the large French companies in which the working language, even in the Parisian headquarters, is English - which must be annoying for any locals who might happen to work there. Also to reading that Paul Gascoigne was not very happy when playing for Lazio in Rome for this very reason. Not much fun being stuck in a foreign land without the language, even if you are getting well paid.

PS 2: and for once in a while, a problem with (Google's) Blogger which meant that uploading pictures was not working. For several hours.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.com/2015/04/tree-visits.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2017/10/hembury-woods.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2015/04/botanical-walk.html.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aponogeton_distachyos.

Reference 5: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/05/dartmoor-tweets.html.

Union Jack

I have always been rather keen on the Union Jack, not particularly for patriotic reasons, but because it is different. Many countries go in for some form of tricolour, more or less all of which I would fail to identify. I couldn't even say which way around the French tricolour is supposed to fly. And the only country with a flag which is similarly idiosyncratic to our own is the United States - which, given their origins, is perhaps no coincidence.

So today, given that the way we are headed means that we will probably not be able to use it for many more years, at the very least not use it with much pride, I decided to fly the Union Jack on the pirate ship erected for the day in our back garden. As luck would have it, BH had something suitable left over from a street party. And I had a suitable bamboo pole to fly it from.

The image above is taken from the Wikipedia entry, and reference 1 confirms that they had got it the right way up. I don't think I ever knew the simple rule enunciated there, despite membership of patriotic outfits like the Cubs, the Scouts and the CCF.

PS: later in the day, I was interested to see that a panel of the great and the good had decided that Paul Dacre, the former editor of that organ of the right wing of the Tory party known as the 'Daily Mail', to this day the source of lot more of the content of my Microsoft news feed than I care for, was unappointable as the new chair of OfCom, to replace Lord Burns, another member of the great and good club. This despite our fat leader barking for him, that is to say Dacre, not Burns. And if Dacre does break through on the rerun, how long will the BBC survive after that? Will it be replaced by a UK version of Fox News? Contracted out to News Corp?

Reference 1: https://www.theukrules.co.uk/rules/legal/flags/union-jack-flag.html.

Peaked this time

A month later, the latest version of the FT's viral graphic. As it turned out, it had not peaked last time, with that coming a couple of weeks later. With the current falling away looking to be mainly accounted for by improvements in Europe.

When will be get a satisfactory explanation of the Indian explosion since the New Year? Will it turn out to be a replay of the explosion in Europe if the Autumn of last year? Population of the former said to be 1,400m with a density of 500/sq km, while the latter is 750m with a density of a very modest 70/sq km, this last number dragged down by Europe including everything up to the Caspian. But even if we shrink down to the European Union we still only get to 500m and 100/sq km, so still a lot less dense than India, statistical complications notwithstanding. While by way of comparison China, where there are not many cases at all, is 1,400m and 150/sq km. Bangladesh is 170m and 1,200/sq km. UK is 70m and 270/sq km. So maybe some combination of large size, high (but by no means the highest) density, many slums, rural poverty and a big-mouth leader is the answer.

Should we be worried about the steady, broad bands that are the Middle East (green) and the rest of Asia (lower pink)?

PS: all the populations and densities come from Wikipedia, where they are routinely and conveniently included in country entries. But I have not read the footnotes and I have no idea how careful the compilers have been. Summary at reference 2.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/04/peaky.html. The graphic's last outing.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_density.

More Buckfast

By the Thursday, I was adjusting to the rather different taste of tea made with soft water. To the point of just topping up a half empty cup of tea with more hot water. While I did not need to adjust to the absence of unsightly scum on the surface of the tea and sticking to the inside of the cups. Although the water must have had something in it as the kettle did have some scale inside.

Breakfast out of the way, back to Buckfast to meet with some friends whom BH has known for even longer than she has known me. Went around the gardens rather more carefully on this occasion, starting with the rather impressive avenue of conifers in the graveyard behind the car park. I suppose, some kind of cypress tree.

Being just above the Dart, damp enough for moss to be growing inside most of the lavender bushes around the border of the Lavender Garden.

While this willow certainly took to being layered. From where I associate to the deer fence on my allotment, where the willow staves used as intermediates between the serious posts all rooted and shooted. Which I was all for, as this meant the posts would last. As it turned out, I packed the allotments up shortly after that. See reference 1 for a selection of posts on the subject.

Tea and pasties for lunch in the awning outside the otherwise closed (and usually very satisfactory) cafeteria.

Some serious and healthy looking pleaching in the garden just outside the gate, dedicated by St. Paul via his letter to the Phillipians. I had not realised that the church at Phillipi, started around 50CE, must be one of the oldest, with the only catch being that by the sixteenth century, this old and once important city was just a heap of ruins, used as a quarry. Conquered by and renamed for the father of Alexander the Great. The site of an important battle in the wars that followed the assassination of Julius Caesar. Not to be confused with the Phillipics, a series of 14 speeches to the Senate (of Rome) by Cicero against Mark Antony, named for speeches by Demosthenes against the same father of Alexander the Great. Cicero was very popular at the time, but the subsequent war went against him and although he tried to cut a deal with Octavian (as the lesser of the various evils), he was proscribed at the start of the triumvirate, a proscription of revenge, settlement and theft. The attendant deal among the triumvirs being, according to Wikipedia, that as part of the package, that each triumvir had to sacrifice one rich friend whom one of the others did not like, with Cicero being Octavian's. Executed cleanly enough, but his head and hands were exhibited in the forum after being abused by Antony's wife of the time, Fulvia. Who also had it in for him over some sex scandal, fifteen years previous. Some people have long memories. The story is to be found at reference 2, but I don't know where I first got it from, it seeming to fall between 'Julius Caesar' and 'Antony and Cleopatra', with Fulvia's death being announced very near the beginning of this last.

The active part of the day closed, back at Holne, with white pudding sandwiches, fresh white bread being available to make them with. The same stuff as was noticed at reference 3. Notice the relics of the natural casings - presumably intestinal - shrivelled up on some of the tops. Good gear.

Wound down with a slab of the Grenada version of the 'The Forsyte Saga' from 2002 or so. A bit slimmed down from the classic BBC version of BH's childhood (my lot did not have a television in those days), but lushly made and we rather like it. Perhaps our third viewing in as many years. See references 4 and 5.

Reference 1: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/search?q=deer+fence+chicken. No pictures, but the sketch above should give the idea.

Reference 2: https://lydiaslibrary.wordpress.com/2014/10/02/ciceros-tongue/.

Reference 3: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/05/heritage-junk-food-record.html.

Reference 4: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0260615/.

Reference 5: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/08/move-over-maigret.html.

Let sleeping ducks lie

An excursion into sleep, prompted by learning by chance that mallards often sleep with one eye open, first noticed at reference 1. After which I turned up references 2, 3 and 4, among others.

I have been reminded that sleep is a rather more complicated business that shutting down at dusk and opening up again at dawn. For example, one might go through half a dozen sleep cycles during the night, with a period of what is called REM sleep (of reference 5) in the middle of most of those cycles, periods in which the arousal threshold is high, muscles are slack and thermal regulation is suspended. Thus accounting for the need to sleep lying down in secure, warm places. And sleep is very necessary: deprive someone of sleep for any length of time and death will eventually follow.

More particularly, I learn that while humans put the whole of their brain to sleep, some animals, particular some birds and most sea animals  - whales, seals and such-like – are able to put one hemisphere of their brain to sleep at a time. Generally speaking this seems to mean that the contralateral eye is turned off – that is to say, if the left side of the brain (for example) is asleep, then the right eye is turned off. Sometimes this is called unihemispheric-monocular sleep  or Un-Mo sleep. A compromise between being properly asleep and being properly awake, a compromise driven by some fact of life or other.

In the case of ground roosting birds like ducks, this compromise is mainly about keeping an eye out for predators, and in reference 2 we are told that ducks can manage their Un-Mo sleep according to circumstances – not doing so much of it, for example, if they are in the middle of a flock. Let the ones on the outside of the flock be the sentries and do the looking out.

In the case of mammals living entirely in the water, like whales, this compromise is mainly about coming up for air from time to time and maintaining thermal regulation, tasks which can be managed with just half the brain online. While seals can do Un-Mo sleep while swimming on the surface, on their sides, paddling with just the one flipper.

From which I branched off briefly to animals like horses, who, it seems, can sleep, at least after a fashion, at least some of the time, while standing up. While BH pointed out that when our children were young, she often used to half sleep, in some sense or other, with some part of her brain keeping an ear out for untoward childish activity.

PS: along the way, I came across the fact that the mouths of whales are not connected to their lungs, as is the case with most land animals. Their lungs are connected to their blowholes on the tops of their heads, their version of the nose in evolution speak. I wonder what that Irish creationist and politician, Mr Edwin Poots, would make of all this? While I associate from his name to the splendid Mr. Pooter.

References

Reference 1: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/05/buckfast-abbey-with-inn.html. First notice of this matter. With a visit to Wikipedia prompted by confusion over the name ‘mallard’.

Reference 2: Half-awake to the risk of predation – Niels C. Rattenborg, Steven L. Lima and Charles J. Amlaner – 1999.

Reference 3: Avian sleep – Amlaner, C. J. & Ball, N. J. – 1994.

Reference 4: Unihemispheric sleep and asymmetrical sleep: behavioral, neurophysiological, and functional perspectives – Gian Gastone Mascetti – 2016.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_eye_movement_sleep.

Buckfast: the Abbey with an Inn

In the middle of our wet week in Devon, we paid a visit to both Buckfast Abbey (blue cross) and the Abbey Inn (blue pot) next door, with both perched on the banks of the river Dart, a few miles downstream from Venford Reservoir, last noticed at reference 1.

Soft steady rain at 06:30 and plenty of wild garlic on the side of the side roads.

Taking a look at the Madonna and child on the way into the Abbey gardens, we learned from a trusty that the Madonna was all things to all men, which meant, inter alia, that she took local form. In this case the model was a local housewife and the child was her own, actually a girl child rather than a boy child.

Snapped the young araucaria at the back of the public part of the garden, last noticed at reference 3. It seems that it likes the damp, mild micro-climate above the river.

Beyond observing that seen from the right angle, the leaves appear to come in spirals, not any closer to working out the pattern of leaf formation. Maybe one day we will come across a branch, freshly knocked or cut off, that I could dissect.

From there to pick up BH's brother from his flat nearby, then on to lunch in a viral bus shelter erected outside the Abbey Inn. On sloping ground, which was not great, but with integral, customer controlled heating which was. Unconfirmed sighting of a nuthatch on a nearby tree on our side of the river, confirmed sighting of a mallard poking about on the other side. In which connection, quite by chance, I learn that mallards, along with some other birds and some whales can sleep with one half of the brain at a time. In the case of mallards, the idea being that the other half can keep an eye out for predators. See references 4 and 5. To be followed up tomorrow.

I took a rather good vegetarian pizza (if cheese is allowed vegetarians). BH took fish and chips, pretty good, even if the interior of the batter was rather yellow. It also came with rather a lot of dressing, rather as my burger had the day before. Perhaps a regional thing. While BH's brother's dessert took the form of apple crumble served in a pint pot. Another first! But he was well pleased, which was the important thing.

More wild garlic on the way home. Through the back lanes, rather than along the main road, and we were lucky that we met the milk tanker before we were properly into the lanes, where the encounter might have been a little awkward.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/05/round-pond.html.

Reference 2: https://theabbeyinnbuckfast.co.uk/.

Reference 3: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/10/araucaria.html.

Reference 4: Half-awake to the risk of predation - Niels C. Rattenborg, Steven L. Lima and Charles J. Amlaner - 1999.

Reference 5: Unihemispheric sleep and asymmetrical sleep: behavioral, neurophysiological, and functional perspectives - Gian Gastone Mascetti - 2016.

Week eleven

Starting to look a bit long in the tooth now. Not helped by Cortana not managing to get the top and the bottom in focus at the same time. Maybe if I moved the pot to the west facing kitchen, the light would be better, but that, somehow, seems to be cheating.

Following the thoughts at reference 1, wondering about seeds again. Maybe next time the aloe flowers, assuming this to be in at least mild weather, I will put the thing outside and give the insects a go. Or does it depend on insects which only thrive in the Mexican highlands, awash with aloes? Do I need to get a fine paintbrush out and do it that way, as if it were a pumpkin?

The orchid is doing well behind, with a new, rather obscene looking shoot having appeared between two leaves, between it and the aloe. Maybe two inches long now.

Suitcase on the left having been recovered from the roof, contents awaiting inspection prior to dispatch to the tip, as noted in the previous post. Perfectly decent suitcase of shell construction, in working order, if a little shabby. But a sign of the wasteful times we live in that it is without value. Only good for the bulky household waste container at the tip.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/05/week-ten.html.

Group search key: tfe.

Big day

[the gates were open again by the time we got there today]

Today did not start terribly well as it was wet on my way around Jubilee Way. It started raining on Ewell by-pass and I was going to tough it out, but after a few minutes decided against and unpacked the old-speak, yellow cycling cape. A few minutes later, it had stopped again and I packed it away. Then a few minutes after that, it started coming down again, so I unpacked the cape again. By the time I got to the roundabout at the corner of Hook Road Arena it was raining quite hard and I would not have been surprised if there had been lightning - of which there has been a fair bit over the last few weeks. Slightly hairy going around the roundabout as hand signals are awkward from underneath a cape, but I managed to get home in one piece.

Spot of cold beef for lunch (on which more in due course), by which time the sky had cleared and the sun was warm. Few minutes zizz on the back patio, then off to the tip (aka the community recycling centre) with some stuff we had cleared out of the roof over the weekend. Some of which stuff which had been sitting there for more than twenty years and we have finally worked out that we are unlikely to need it again. Or than anyone else is likely to need it. Or even take it off our hands. 

Plus various odds and ends from the garage. Like the £25 Kryptonite bicycle lock I found on my travels a year or so ago but never got around to getting in touch with them about unlocking it. In fact, I had forgotten all about it and bought a lock from Halfords since - but at least I did not pay £25 for it and it is nowhere near as heavy.

Plus a selection of older persons' DVD's, mainly costume dramas and murder soaps, now deemed to be surplus to requirements, despite our continuing failure to move our television beyond ITV3.

Printed off my online appointment letter - introduced last year to keep queues down a bit - a nuisance, but at least it worked.

Dug out BH's driving license complete with photograph.

Got into the tip OK, supervised on this occasion by a trio of cheerful young men. One of whom carried off the DVD's for inspection. So it is possible that some of them will find a home after all. So a satisfactory visit - our first for well over a year.

From there to the Dr. Barnardo's charity shop at Horton Retail, where they professed themselves happy to take a couple of surplus mugs and three surplus artworks, two of them originals and signed by the artist.

We rewarded ourselves with a four pack of hot cross buns from Coughlans, the Eccles cakes I was looking for being absent. As were the Chelsea buns which were our second string. To be toasted shortly.

PS 1: raining again now.

PS 2: 17:30: just had another sharp shower. Regression to April showers. Will the young sunflower plants hack it?

PS 3: 17:40: just been reading that our Home Secretary takes her lead from our fat leader when it comes to rules and agreements: ministers are far too busy and important to worry about that kind of stuff. Rules and agreements are for other people. This at the same time as explaining that her department will apply the full rigor of the law, dotting all the i's and crossing all the t's, when it comes to foreign people suspected of having never known about, forgotten, bent or broken a few rules when trying to stay here or when trying to get here. Twenty years service in our care or health industries notwithstanding.

Reference 1: https://www.barnardos.org.uk/.

Reference 2: http://www.coughlansbakery.co.uk/. From Thornton Heath, not far from where I spent my last year or so as an undergraduate. A place called Warwick Road, where, as it happened, there was a very good baker at the top of the road. Selling proper English white bread, hard to get these days, despite the ridiculous amount of choice one is offered.

Some good news

[A G7 pact on corporate tax could be sealed as early as Friday after progress was made among top officials in recent days ©Bloomberg]

There is a ray of sunshine in a welter of generally bad news. The FT reports this morning that the G7 group is close to agreement on the reform of the taxation of large international companies, a reform based on two pillars: one about minimum corporation tax and the location of corporation tax; the other about taxing international companies according to where they make their money. Agreement which ought to carry through to OECD and execution.

Ironic that this should be happening in some large part because of pushing from President Biden, the inventor of the State of Delaware as one of the largest tax havens in the world - although I cannot pretend to understand the financial arcana which made it so. Those that do so pretend can try reference 1. Up there with Past President Juncker who did a similar job for Luxembourg - another life-long politician who never did a regular day's work!

Reference 1a: https://www.thenation.com/article/economy/tax-haven-delaware-south-dakota/.

Reference 1b: How tax haven states enable billionaires to hide trillions: The US has now become the global center for money hiding and illicit wealth storage - Chuck Collins/The Nation - 2021.

Regional capital

While in Devon we paid the first visit to the regional capital, that is to say Exeter, for a while. Checking this morning, apart from the odd visit to a house in the suburbs, our first visit for more than four years, that is to say since the end of 2016, with one of several notices of that visit noticed at reference 1. I wonder this morning whether the local authority has been obliged to launch a full-on consultation about whether the statue snapped there should be relocated or melted down. Perhaps the local people have taken the law into their own hands.

On this occasion we confined ourselves to what had been the docks area of Exeter, more recently the Quay area and now a version of our own Covent Garden in London. The maritime museum, which used to include a lot of interesting old boats - possibly small ships even - in the dock, looks to be long gone, with the dock now mainly occupied by paddle boarders. A way of getting around on the water which still strikes me as perverse: more a way of (slightly) athletic posing than a method of transport.

Started off at the conveniently located and conveniently near empty Haven Banks car park. Conveniently located except with regard to public toilets, oddly thin on the ground for a tourist attraction. Although to be fair to its promoters, in normal times there are plenty of bars and restaurants offering facilities.

Started off with a quite decent cinnamon bun from a small eatery on the Haven Banks side, then headed on down to what used to be the gas works, where what we took for the tied cottage of the manager, appears to have escaped the attentions of the heritage people.

Crossed what used to be the ship canal and made our way across the new-to-me Trews Weir suspension bridge, a footbridge across the Exe proper. Which delivered us to an interesting bit of old Exeter, below the Topsham Road and St. Leonard's church. Past a large public house called the Port Royal, not open at the time. Possibly an independent, although reference 2 is not terribly informative.

Past two sitting swans, who did not seem to mind sitting just the other side of the railings at the edge of our path. Past one treading duck. Or possibly a coot, I forget which now.

Refused entry at an eatery called the Waterside, on account of the outdoor social spacing then in force. A place with a rather more elaborate website (reference 3) than the Port Royal. Maybe the latter is just too far from the centre, at all of a couple of hundred yards.

Entry achieved at the Puerto Lounge, where we took a cool lunch, involving, in my case, a burger with some sweet yellow sauce dolloped onto to it. Quite edible - but I was glad to have the benefit of my duffel coat, with the hood up for once in a while. It turns out this morning that this lounge belongs to the same family as the Caballo Lounge here in Epsom, an eatery I think we have yet to try. Not to be confused with Cabello Hair & Beauty at the other end of town.

Across the unnamed inlet just to the north of the lounge and on up to Quay Hill, where we had a view of what might be a Milling Attraction, replacement of a sort for the Maritime Museum.

Plus an arty shed, not the sort of thing I recall seeing in the real Covent Garden at all.

Plus the Bishop Blaize public house, a house I don't think I have ever visited in the fifty years or more than I have used such places in Exeter. I assumed a notable bishop from the cathedral just up the road, but this morning he turns out to be an Armenian bishop and saint who became the patron saint of wool combers. So the pub is named for the wool trade of old Exeter, not for a local bishop at all. See references 5 and 6. Bing suggests that there are quite a lot of houses with this name, allowing for various spellings, scattered about the country. Presumably, although I have not checked, once woolly parts of the country.

From there we made our way up Stepcote Hill, near the local Salvation Army Citadel and including some tied cottages for senior officers therein. Also therein, some confusion between the Church Army and the Salvation Army, which, for the avoidance of doubt, are not the same thing. See references 7 and 8.

And so to the Oxfam bookshop at the top of South Street and the neighbouring bric-a-brac shop. A visit already noticed in the margins of reference 9.

From there back down to Haven Banks, more or less following the route I used to cycle, ten years or more ago, up the canal from Exminster, to the Internet facilities offered to aliens by the library in Exeter town centre. A library I first used before I was twenty years of age.

BH drove us home through a considerable amount of rain, in the intervals of which I was interested to see clouds of steam rising off the wet fields. To take tea and the last two rock cakes from Horrabridge when we got back to Holne.

PS: it also turns out that the unnamed inlet is actually the old Mill Leat, which runs roughly north west to come out at what was once a mill and is now a public house called the 'Mill on the Exe', roughly at the junction of Bonhay Road and Exe Street. What was once a whole line of mills. Snapped above from Ordnance Survey. There is also a long island in the Exe, alongside St. David's Station, rather like one of those islands in the Seine at Paris. Something to be explored on our next visit.

Reference 1: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2016/12/buller.html.

Reference 2: https://www.theportroyal.co.uk/.

Reference 3: https://www.waterfrontexeter.co.uk/.

Reference 4: http://thelounges.co.uk/lounges/puerto/.

Reference 5: http://www.exetermemories.co.uk/em/_pubs/bishop_blaize.php.

Reference 6: https://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=28.

Reference 7: https://www.churcharmy.org.uk/.

Reference 8: https://www.salvationarmy.org.uk/.

Reference 9: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/05/vercors.html.

Reference 10: Two thousand years in Exeter - W. G. Hoskins - 1960. A book about some of this being closely studied by BH.

Reference 11: The Making of the English Landscape - Hoskins, W. G. - 1977. On the strength of reference 10, now in the post. A snip from Abebooks.

Health

I was rather annoyed that our fat leader saw fit to spend some stupendous amount on rolls of wallpaper for his flat in Downing Street (plus I have heard rumours that it was not even stuck up properly, something which can be tricky with hard-core, heavy-duty wallpaper), while denying a decent bonus to NHS staff for their efforts over the past year or so.

Further annoyed today to read that he and his team are planning yet another reorganisation - the last big one now being a bit long in the tooth at eight years. Maybe the last one was a bit of a disaster and needs to be rolled back - but the impression given here at Epsom is that they would rather spend money on expensive management consultants than pay the people who do the work a bit more and perhaps get enough of them. Maybe expensive management consultancies throw good parties for their customers.

PS 1: maybe now is not quite the right time to be throwing billions of pounds at a tunnel under Stonehenge - however good the parties are. See reference 3.

PS 2: there is also the consideration that a lot of these management consultants are hired out by the same people who do such a great job of auditing the likes of Carillion and Northern Rock. Not to mention RBS.

Reference 1: https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/951305.

Reference 2: https://www.bma.org.uk/news-and-opinion/doctors-seek-respite-before-further-reforms.

Reference 3: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/08/ten-minutes-on-a303.html.

Black beauty

With this being prompted by a piece about coal in the FT earlier in the month, with the picture above catching my eye and being saved.

The next thing to catch my eye was the chart above, showing that the biggest coal exporters in the world were Australia and Indonesia. I had known that the former was big into coal, but not the latter.

Then while coal worldwide might be set to fall, from the chart above, the fall does not seem to be kicking in big any time soon, with demand in Asia-Pacific, interpreted broadly, looking set for a modest rise over the next few years. So the Australian miners should be OK for a while. That said, not at all clear to me from the chart what is going on elsewhere in the world. Not the best graphic to come out of the FT.

I then turned my attention to the first of the snaps above. What on earth was it? I eventually ran it down to a feature shown up in Satellite View in gmaps, a little to the west of a small community called Baralaba, in the county of Banana, in Queensland, Australia, with the dark splodge middle right being a mountain called Mount Ramsay (24°15'41.2"S, 149°53'35.5"E), visible in the distance in the first snap. A sandstone wonder which is not, it seems, accessible to the general public.

The Dawson River runs just to the west of the two circular patches, a river which I think regularly floods the surrounding land.

The main business of the area is coal, with cows as runner up, and it also seems that a new coal mine (I think, reference 2) has been the subject of an epic battle between a man in the street (Paul Stephenson) and big coal. Bing turns up lots of stuff about it, including, for example, reference 3.

But all that apart, I failed to trace the first of the snaps above, in the sense of finding out what it was. I decided, in the absence of anything more positive, that it must be an environmentally reclaimed open cast coal mine - with environment figuring quite large in the second half of reference 2. Important birds like Monarcha melanopsis and Myiagra cyanoleuca.

I learn along the way that Murdoch - the chap who brings us the 'Sun' and who brought us the 'News of the World' - is big for big coal. A big supporter of the more coal the merrier.

PS: I only found my way back to the article at reference 1 below by asking Google Image where the circular snap above came from. FT search returned far too many hits for 'australia coal' to be helpful and it didn't seem to bite on the date at all.

Reference 1: Climate change: Australia wrestles with its coal mining dilemma: Even as demand falls, federal and state governments are pumping billions into the polluting fossil fuel industry - Jamie Smyth/FT - 2021.

Reference 2: https://www.qld.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0015/108312/baralaba-south-ias.pdf.

Reference 3: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-04/grazier-son-nears-end-of-david-and-goliath-battle-cockatoo-coal/7002034.

The call signs of certain dolphins

This being a story built around the dolphins of Shark Bay, a famous sea life flavoured resort on the western coast of Australia. I started with reference 1, working my way through to reference 6. The Morell story at reference 1 is a bit short on references, but she appears to be drawing on references 2 and 3, the first of which I have barely glanced at.

It seems that bottlenose dolphins, certainly the ones in Shark Bay, emit acoustic call signs, whistles of the order of a second in duration, from which they can be identified, presumably by their conspecifics. An underwater version of what, for example, chimpanzees and dogs do by looking and smelling.

The male dolphins use these and other cues to maintain two tier social structures, with a group of the outer tier containing as many as 15 individuals and with these groups sometimes surviving for years. Groups which work together to catch and keep oestrus females. I didn’t get to find out how they shared out the catch.

Dolphin whistles, albeit not from the same species, Tursiops truncatus rather than Tursiops aduncus, are analysed at reference 4, from which the snap above is taken, complete with ‘msec’ for ‘sec’ in the left hand panel. It seems that the relevant information is captured by a plot of fundamental frequency against time and that successful matching of whistles can be achieved by appropriate warping of the time dimension. That is to say whistles with the same features in the same order come from the same dolphin even if things vary a bit otherwise in the time dimension. A trick which the authors say does not work with humans because a reduction to the fundamental frequency – or any other simple derivative of the complete spectrogram – is too reductive.

Whistles that are clever in that they are cerebrally produced, are an artefact of the social brain rather than a straightforward consequence of the chemical genes. They are like a word in that one still has the same word, despite variation of detail, despite noise. Robust in that sense. But not like a word in that they are a call sign, not a calling. It is not as if one dolphin can call another, can summon another by whistling his whistle.

So an interesting cul-de-sac in the evolution of words and names proper.

 PS 1: From reference 2 we have more elaborate charts. ‘Figure 1 [above left]. Social network of 17 adult males grouped in their second-order alliances. Only coefficients of association (CoAs) R0.2 are shown, as this reliably identifies second-order alliance partners, and males are color coded by alliance membership. The thickness of the lines indicates the strength of the dyadic social relationship, and alongside each male is a spectrogram of his signature whistle (sampling rate: 96 kHz; fast Fourier transform (FFT) length: 1,024; Hanning window function). See also Figure S1 [above right] for determination of alliance membership’.

PS 2: there seems to be a fair amount of academic controversy about all this. The dust does not appear to have settled.

References

Reference 1a: Dolphins learn the ‘names’ of their friends to form teams – a first in animal kingdom – Virginia Morell – 2021.

Reference 1b: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/04/dolphins-learn-names-their-friends-form-teams-first-animal-kingdom.

Reference 2: Acoustic coordination by allied male dolphins in a cooperative context – Bronte L. Moore, Richard C. Connor, Simon J. Allen, Michael Krützen and Stephanie L. King – 2020.

Reference 3: Bottlenose dolphins retain individual vocal labels in multi-level alliances - King SL, Friedman WF, Allen SJ, Gerber L, Jensen FH, Wittwer S, Connor RC, Krutzen M. – 2018.

Reference 4: A quantitative measure of similarity for tursiops truncatus signature whistles – John R. Buck – 1993.

Reference 5: http://www.sharkbaydolphins.org/. ‘The famous dolphins of Shark Bay, Western Australia, have been studied since the early 1980s. Almost 40 years of scientific research into one of the world’s most fascinating animal populations has provided insight into their behaviour, social structure, genetics, communication and ecology, including the daily challenges they face to find mates and food, and to avoid enemies and predators. Shark Bay is a busy place for a dolphin, packed with friends and foes, collaborators and competitors. Vast seagrass meadows provide forage for turtles and dugongs, and a nursery for fish; shallow sand flats and mangroves are home to invertebrates, rays and small sharks; deeper channels support sponge gardens and rocky reefs, providing hunting grounds for sea snakes, large sharks and, of course, dolphins’.

Reference 6: https://theadopteddaughter.com/monkey-mia-shark-bay-western-australia/. The source of the opening snap of a viewing facility somewhere on Shark Bay. Another person of faith. They seem to get everywhere!

Corkscrews

Someone - presumably the council or a council contracted tree surgeon - has pruned the pair of corkscrew willows (possibly Salix babylonica var. pekinensis 'Tortuosa') on Clay Hill Green, on West Hill. A pair which was originally a threesome, with the middle one of the three being taken down at some point. Perhaps three were planted to allow for a bit of attrition, or perhaps the planter did not know how big they were going to get in this particular spot, quite close to a heritage brick wall facing south west.

Not trees that I would plant myself, not caring for the die-back and frost damage they seem to be prone to. I like my trees to be healthy and vigorous.

PS 1: amused how tree surgeons have been assimilated into the professional classes, either by use of the word 'surgeon' of by that of 'professional'. An assimilation which is good because it is democratic and levelling, bad because it is untruthful, with the old-fashioned distinction between trade, craft and profession being less so. There is also the point that many tree surgeons are actually resting rock climbers, hired for their heads for heights and skills with ropes, rather than for their knowledge of matters arboreal. Who knows where the best balance lies?

PS 2: to pursue the matter, 'profess' and its relatives rate three pages in OED. Originally all to do with publicly professing one's faith in the one true church. Later extended to doctors and lawyers, later still to professional soldiers. Later still to all kinds of occupations, but usually with a good dose of book-learning involved. The new to me Webster's covers much the same ground, but manages with just one column, albeit with rather smaller print.

Reference 1: Webster's Third New International Dictionary – Philip P. Gove and others – 1971.